The Lie of Trees
by tami3
Summary: For Morphea13 because she thinks I write too many sad stories. Kanda isn't sure that he wants to die gracefully any more. But that doesn't mean he won't do it if it's for the best. But Allen knows better, as he always has.


The Lie of Trees

He absolutely can't believe he can't be in Japan for this. There are flower trees in Japan. Real flower trees, not like those things that smudge up and sludge up to the tar-infused lungs of the city's circulation system. Industry keeping London alive while it smokes itself dead. The trees here can barely penetrate their pollutant crust to put out leaves in the spring. And then the scraggly greenery they can muster up crisps into brown ugly bits as soon as the first snow, tinged with gray and flavored with a smoky acidity, fouls his lip.

He hates it here. He wants to be home. He's forgotten all the people and he doesn't think they'd care much for him now anyways, with his Japanese badly inflicted by a Western heavy-tongued-ness, his preference for less exposing trousers over kimonos, and his ability to take milk in tea. He hasn't been in Japan since it was strictly for business with the ark.

And even if he could remember what it was like, his eyes bored and lazy from taking in all the same kind of people with the same black hair, the same black eyes, the same olive skin (his own), Japan was all but gutted of humans when the Earl took over. Their akuma proxies are gone now and the population there is rebuilding itself, but who's to say they are the same people Yuu Kanda came from?

He doesn't trust them, which he can do without having ever met them.

For him, any people in his memories have been replaced by trees, standing lovingly like family at the threshold. He knows it's his own fault that he's so out of touch with his own roots that his thoughts stall at the shallow European perception of foreign countries, but he misses the cherry blossom trees, that cliché. He thinks he didn't like sweets as a child either, and that he never went to the festivals, but he remembers watching the sakura trees shed.

So that's his best memory, rather stupidly by default, and Yuu Kanda being melancholy keeps going to back to their best myth.

They come beautiful and go swiftly, with grace and no regret. Life may be short, but can adored more for being so. He wouldn't mind dying while believing that. That is the only reason he wants to go home, like a bird trying to fly back to where it nested as a chick. He needs that legend and to live it, and then he would be able to go in peace. He could be calm if he had that. That's why he's been relatively calm for long a time. Cruel and temperamental, but collected.

It's his only chance so he's forcing himself to go and see the stunted trees he hates and the dusty-faced workers stumbling home drunk but Allen Walker hauls him back through the gate with a strange frown.

"It's the middle of winter, Kanda. The bridge is snowed over and the streets are a terrible mess. Even I don't like to go to London this time of year and I was born there. Geez, why have you had such happy feet lately? You used to never like going anywhere outside of missions."

Kanda answers him without thinking.

"None of my business? Che, why am I not surprised."

Allen is an interesting person. He bleeds into people as they bleed into him. It happens naturally and whether or not he likes that person has absolutely no bearing on how much he allows their essence to invade his own personality. He's heard Kanda go "che" so much over the past few years that it hisses out of his own mouth at mild annoyances. Kanda had once tried threatening to him to get him to stop but Allen had got him with Lenalee-like swipe with his lunch tray and blew a Lavi-like raspberry. He did it in such bold nonchalance that Kanda had been too nonplussed to carry through.

"Anyways. Don't go to London if you're just bored. There isn't anything to do that you can't do here."

"Shut up. I hate you." He hears himself say that. He stops, talking and walking, and his breath takes on another rhythm as he slides back into focus. He's said that plenty of times before, but usually he means it like it makes him hot with complete disbelief at how very in the way the light-eyed, light-bodied boy is.

He is not really like that right now. Allen has on a long brown winter coat that Komui gave him, partly as a present and partly as a hand-me-down. He's as inconspicuous as a civilian about to slide past. He doesn't wear his uniform when he's not on missions, but that is the only way Kanda knows him.

"That was uncalled for. Okay, I hate you too. Are you going back in? I'm going to take a walk. Around here, mind you."

"No." he grumbles. "No…I was going to see the trees."

"Trees? What trees?" Allen demands clearly with all the authority of a native-born Londoner. "There are no trees in the city. You go to the country for that. Do you mean like the park or something?"

"No, not that. Just the ones in the street."

"Kanda, why aren't you making any sense? It's winter, get it? There's already hardly any trees in London to begin with, and right now they definitely don't have leaves. Not that it's really all that great when they do."

"The smoke kills them. But we can't shut down the factories. That's why." Kanda doesn't know when he swapped places with Allen, who's all grown up now and undaunted in his mature indifference as the top of his head still is barely level with Kanda's nose. Defending sickly plant-life is much more in keeping with the tender-faced babblings of the Allen of their first acquaintance than Kanda in any sense. Kanda doesn't really know where that Allen went, especially when the Allen today is still plenty of smiles and kindness and humor touched with darkness. As he always was.

And besides, Kanda hates the trees too.

Allen has a bit of a sarcastic edge to his voice "Yeah. We need the factories, even if they kill the trees. So it can't be helped, and it's not a big deal, right?" He stretches and his broadened shoulders, newer than the rest of him, test the material of his sleeves. Across his face runs pink curve sinking into his winter-pale skin. His smile is tough like it has learned to protect itself from all the dislike that they started out with.

"Don't you like evergreens?" he jabs a spiny metal thumb at the conifer forest around them. The boughs are plump and glowing pristine from the snowstorm of yesterday. The thick, sturdy green of their needles peep out from the edges. "They're nice to look at year-round, stay green through the winter…It feels like they could live forever if they wanted to. That's pretty admirable, don't you think?" Allen is bright-eyed, hair twisted into a star shape at the nape of his neck despite the cold.

Allen is someone who has died twice and over but keeps coming back. You could believe he would do it all his life until he was ready to dictate his own terms. He and the grim reaper seem to be friendly to the point he can negotiate his life contract as much as he wants.

Kanda turns around and stalks the long way back inside so Allen can't tell he's effectively quashed his desire to drift about. He reassesses the value of continuing to hate Allen Walker because now he has a reason (complete and utter jealousy) and he really, really wishes he were back in Japan where there are cherry trees instead of evergreens and he wouldn't be the weird one for liking the kind he does.

"Just stay here, Kanda!" Allen insists.

When Kanda undoes the bandages he knows it looks like he's been playing around. The skin that the marks takes up are slickly dark like an oil spill or black stone buffed to a wet shine. One glance and anyone would be able to tell it's not a tattoo. Ink needled into the body becomes muted as it is faded by new layers of semi-translucent skin. Kanda looks like he took a brush and laid thick strokes of paint onto himself.

When he walks into the hall all fall quiet and eyes fixate with somber confusion at his shoulder. When he stands against a dark doorway the shadows looks like his arm has separated from his body but still wants to float close. It's not like Kanda makes people more inclined to speak in his presence, but the awkward silence is palpable. The last time they saw that mark, it definitely wasn't a solid color sleeve, cutting off his limb from his torso.

"No… I _don't_ know what to say" insists a poorly controlled whisper. Behind him a conspiring conversation sparks, conducted in shuffling murmurs. "No…really, I don't…"

Kanda takes a few steps forward before they settle it between themselves. A jacket roughly his size comes around and pins his ponytail against his spine.

"Pretty girls shouldn't walk around naked." Lavi pats his shoulder--lightly, overly conscious that it's the bad one. He zips him up the front with firm finality. He goes up to Kanda's throat, so not a hint of the blackness shows.

As soon as he's done Kanda grabs his hand and squeezes murderously. Lavi pretends to wince at but his grin lets everyone else understand that the painful cracking sounds are just his knuckles popping. Kanda only has the heart to be really dangerous when things are good because when things are good he's genuinely grouchy. He's been a little off-rhythm lately.

Lavi is all in-character flippancy, but behind them Allen smiles his impervious smile. The guileless mastermind, as always.

"You're weird enough Kanda…you want to look at trees, in the winter. At least keep your clothes on when you do." Allen pauses, the logic linking up in his head as he shapes his words. "Bad things seem to happen to you when your clothes get wrecked. Skin is your enemy."

It's not even funny, and what's more it fails in its delivery, but everyone smiles at the joke and the chatter resumes as Kanda goes on his way looking like he swapped torsos with Lavi. Lavi shivers naked and sheepish in the cold of a British castle in the middle of the winter.

Allen is trifle stockier than they would have imagined him to be once his bones elongated and his body fleshed out, but not by much. He sits on the window sill and is light enough for his weight to be supported as he turns an apple in his hands and strips it pale with one long ribbon curling into his lap.

"What are you doing in my room?" Kanda is affronted--terribly, but he's more startled. And really completely without idea how and why there is someone eating fruit in his window.

"I thought you'd like some." Allen says without lifting his head, tilted down over the knife paring away the skin "It's Wednesday and almost time for the exorcists' meeting with Komui. We can't have dinner until afterwards, so I thought a snack would be good. Your room's on the way anyways."

He catches the looping peel and sets it on the table. Allen's seen much stranger in his life and doesn't react to the strange single leaflet suspended in space in the glass vessel. There is nothing so recognizable as a flower anymore. A soft-colored bundle of prune-y petals sits beside the apple peel, separated by the glass wall.

"Get out!" Kanda tries to snap, but is too uncomfortable to do so convincingly.

"Yeah, yeah…of course I am." Allen lifts himself with the heel of his free hand. "We've got that meeting." He brings the knife edge straight down on his armored skin, and the apple falls into two crude heart shapes. He gives Kanda one and sticks the other in his mouth.

Kanda is on the cusp of the realization that he needs to whip the fruit piece to the floor and push the tip of Mugen into the soft tissue under Allen's chin when his heart breaks right under the black blob that has become his left pectoral. As he grips himself, trying to keep from flying into pieces for just a while longer, he lifts his eyes and sees his last petal oxidize into a brittle cloud. His last chance, his last life (used up now) lightly dusts the top of the rest of its fallen fellows.

"Kanda?" he hears Allen asking. He feels Allen's hands tugging him. Kanda vehemently wishes he could just fall alone and proud.

When he wakes up Allen is humming one of the songs he plays when he sits at the ark. It has tones of Chopin and Debussy. Allen isn't exactly an artistic genius. He knows pretty when he hears it and copies it.

Kanda knows for certain that he is alive.

Allen's expression is the same as always, a smile that is a tiny bit invincible. But just that.

"No need to be so dramatic." Allen scolds him from his hospital bedside. "You're going to be okay."

Kanda is likely drugged because feels like he's just been fed a bowl of sunshine. He feels…good. Out of commission, yes, because he has the impression that his sword arm is glued to the sheets for all he can move it. Still, he can't turn his head because he's too worried that the high is from anesthesia needed to keep him steady while they fixed the problem by amputating the curse right off.

"Look." Allen points with his monstrous claw. Before Kanda's sleep-fatigued eyes, as he flips his chin on his shoulder, are ruby rings that dip into his body before arching out again. They look like loose, glittering seams tying his shoulder and arm together. When his gaze lights on them they glow red.

"It…What happened?" Kanda asks hoarsely, and he knows that his heart exploding was no illusion. As he speaks he can feel the loose bits skitter around the hollows in his upper half as the breath he needs for his words stir them.

"I'm guessing crystallization but you'll have to ask Komui to be sure. Your innocence saved you. Did you think it would do any less? " Allen drums his fingers affectionately on his crossed arms. Kanda remembers crimson bangles with strings that thread right into the ankle bones of a dark-haired girl.

"Crown could…hear him, you know. Mugen. 'Kanda's life, I have to save Kanda's life', he said."

"Are you…"Kanda rasps painfully, as rings twitch and dig deeper into him "…kidding?"

'Uh. Uh-huh." Allen laughs. "Well, nothing that literal…but I could tell. Crown knew. Lenalee and her boots might have too, I guess, but she's not around. I didn't say outright because I didn't want to make any premature promises. Yeah" He leans over and unclenches Kanda's fist from the apple half. For a single disgusted moment Kanda thinks Allen's going to down it. But he tosses into the wastebasket.

"But I thought you were safe this whole time. I knew….you know?" Allen peers intensely into his face and there's a hint of smug, kind triumph in his consistency of his look.

"I didn't know." Kanda says and leans back in his pillows. His evolved innocence crackles strong and stands in arches. He's looking forward to Allen making fun of him, which he'll do because he's always mocked Allen's arm, and finding out how the blade takes form. He'll have to get his uniform altered too. It's no sneaky, seeping mess that he's going to hide under clothes.

He knows for sure now that he really, really hates cherry trees. And he smiles.


End file.
